Howdy! This Stern Freefall found its way into my garage so I can fix it up for a friend of mine who got a sweet deal on it from a friendly guy. Being such an unusual game, I figured it would be a good idea to document the process. Overall is extremely clean and in good original shape. Ill let the pictures do most of talking in that regard. Onto the specifics:

The good:
New MPU and Driver board
New power board
Works! (Pretty much...)
9.5 out of 10 backglass
displays are nice

Not as good:
Quite dirty
Some annoying switch matrix issues
Lots of mechs that need attention
A not insignificant amount of PF wear

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Spent most of today tearing her down so I can get to cleaning it. Found some issues from the initial play test and and look through. Funniest thing by far was what looks to be a custom slingshot removal by somebody. Knowing stern at the time though, I think it might be possible that its a factory removal. The ball walker mech has been greased at some point and really needs to be cleaned up. Flippers definitely need a rebuild as they are quite weak. One display is slightly wavy, I'm thinking cold solder joints. Lots of lights out, but thats easy to fix! One suck on light, "Ball in Play", ill have a look at the schematic and find what scr is associated with it. And a myriad of switch matrix issues. Watch your Prop rod on these early sterns, its exceedingly sharp and has begun to wear through the PF on this game. Ive seen a seawitch with a hole in it due to this!!

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I will look for it, any chance you could send me the link?

Nevermind, found it. Thanks for the heads up!

Tedious work, but worth it for prefect lights. Definitely staying with incandecent bulbs, they look far better in these older games.

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I find that a dremel with a 442-3 bit and a little bit of rubbing alcohol is the best way to clean light sockets. Dip it in the alcohol and then run it in the socket for a couple of seconds. Works pretty much every time!

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As mentioned above, my multiball up-kicker thing works right about 75% of the time. Here is what the coil looks like from below, its missing its wrapper so I cant tell what kind it is. A look at the manual shows me that is should be a 27-1700. Lets head on over to ye olde coinbox-o-coils and see if I have one... Here is one! Even has a new coil sleeve in it, score! A look at the multi meter confirms that its in good shape, so I will install it shortly.

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A very fuzzy spinner!

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I tested it as installed and they were the same ohms, just forgot to take a picture.

Cleaned up the drop targets today, keeping the original ones mainly because the replacements dont work as well without some modification. Luckily they are mostly correct and not broken. The only incorrect targets are the "1" in the 5 bank and one of the blue circles in the 3 bank. Our 5 bank target is blank and our 3 bank target is a generic stern one from an earlier game. I dont think either looks really that bad so im leaving them. Took apart the mechs and cleaned them and the targets with hot, soapy water. Will be replacing the coil sleeves as they are dirty and also the old metal style. Also, changed the coil and the ball seems to be much more reliably staying on the wireform.

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Sorry for the lack of updates, I often work on my games late at night and usually just fall asleep forgetting to post any updates. I promise, work has been getting done!

Anyways, starting with something simple, I find that blue inserts are almost always faded on any game. To help with this, a blue colored incandecent bulb really makes them look like they did when new.

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I also seem to have forgotten to take "after" pics of many of the mechs. I'll attempt to take some with things installed back in the game. Here is the ball-walker mech: Someone before had greased it, something you pretty much never do to any pinball mech. It did work ok, but wasn't that smooth and definitely felt gummed up. Took it apart, new coil sleeve and cleaned off all the grease and there is a noticeable improvement in performance. It used to be noisy, making the buzzing you often get with EM flipper mechs. Now it's perfectly quiet

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Mine works perfectly now. Here are my suggestions on how I achieved that.
1. Make sure you have the right 27-1700 coil in there. Too strong and it could fling the ball off.
2. Sounds like you have already bent the top of the "flip" part of the wireform but definitely make sure it's not bent too much up.
3. Finally, the pitch of the game is important, a steeper game is better as it slows the ball down as it goes into the wireform.

Also rebuilt the pops, the 2nd most important mech to rebuild in a game IMO. These old Stern's have AWESOME plastic pop mechs. They are easy to remove and provide better action than the metal ones. The most obvious flaw is if a part breaks you are SOL. These were in great shape, just dirty, so I was able to clean them up no problem.

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Rebuilt the flippers as they certainly didn't have enough power. New rebuild kits make this pretty easy, and unline modern stern kits from Marco you get parts that work without having to call customer service and get them to send you parts that work. Also put some macthing could in so it plays right. Once again forgot the after pictures so I'll have to take those when I get home

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I will have to check when I'm home.

Marcos usually. They have been sending out kits with bad right hand crank for their modern stern games for close to a year at this point. I stopped ordering the kits for a while. Recently I ordered just a stand alone right linkage and crank assembely and it was STILL bad. They will always send a new one, but it's a big hassle calling them from the West coast and waiting for the shipping. They have also sent another bad one as a replacement before.

Thank you for the advice, I know you know your stuff. My only concern was that the right flipper was pretty weak when I got the game. I would usually attribute this to a worn linkage, but TBH I never checked. If they are in good shape, I'll definitely swap the old ones in. Once again, I appreciate the expertise

Sounds great, thank you for the info!!

And the previous comment about weak flipper was definitely a mechanical problem.

Ok so the last thing im struggling with here is the switch matrix problem. I'm pretty sure its a bad diode so im going to replace them all, however I was curious about the cabinet select switch. These switches are in the switch matrix in the manual but not on the switch list. They are for changing the yellow arrow selector with the flippers and I have seen in videos people changing them. However on this machine, they are there but they dont do anything in gameplay or test mode. Also, only the left one has a diode. This all seems weird to me, so if anyone could let me know how their game is that would be great!

Oh yeah, I do have a hole drilled. There is a metal plate underneath the PF with a nut underneath holding the post in. I looked for wiring, but couldn't find anything..

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Well that's a stronger coil, so that very well could fix your issue. I finally took some pictures of my "3rd" slingshot area. Jay from the ipdb is going to post them on there.

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I forgot to check last night, I will soon

Yeah, so you art trying to fill out lines and entire grids. The rainbow inserts in the middle show how many lines you have completed, on my game this resets per ball. You also raise the "left target bonus" with each completion of the 3 bank and this bonus is also collected when you drain. There is a "extra" bonus you get for filling out an entire grid, I don't think that resets between balls, but I could be wrong. The yellow arrows select what row you are lighting up, while each of the 3 drops represent a column. Its changed by various switches throughout the PF but you can also control it yourself using a sort of lane change. You have to have both flipper buttons pressed in in order for it to change. You press both in and the let go of one button for each advance you want it to make... its kinda hard to describe over text. All of this is multiplied by the bonus multiplier, which goes up to 14x! This is definitely where the points are at in this game, multiball is super cool but its fairly random to achieve and doesn't add anything to the score necessarily. Think of it as similar to how nine ball works in that regard. Hopefully this helps.

Finally finished!

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Here is serial number:

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